And yet, I'm looking at a team that was affected by layoffs where solid (or even high) performers were fired while also having been in meetings this week to discuss low performers who weren't fired. "Getting rid of duds" is clearly not what is happening, at least at Google.
Getting rid of high-earners is more correct. Among the highest earners, they pick the bottom 10% of the performers. Or do some MBA-ish cost/productivity calculations and lay off based on some (probably nonsensical, for programmers) "valuation".
Also not what happened on my team. The system did not prioritize more senior vs more junior engineers (in terms of level). Nor did it prioritize people who had unusually large sign-on packages.
